


Fortuna

by Horribibble



Category: Teen Wolf (TV), teen wolf - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Mermaids, Night Things, Protective Stiles, Witches
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-07
Updated: 2013-07-20
Packaged: 2017-12-14 05:03:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/833057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Horribibble/pseuds/Horribibble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They call him Stiles, a concession to the wishes of their priestess, but they will not call him Gabrysz. They are a noble people, or so they like to believe, and they will not tolerate such lies. </p><p>He is a child of ill fortune. </p><p>-</p><p>In a land of fantasy, there are a hundred names for the things people don't understand. One of them is 'Fortuna', a blessing that everyone took for granted. Until the Night Things came.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Red Ribbon

**Author's Note:**

> My first attempt at posting Teen Wolf fanfiction. I'm not certain exactly where I'm going with this, but it's an exercise in attempting to finally post something. It's pretty experimental. Please bear with the present tense, as we are experiencing a bit of self-indulgent English major vomit. It will change to past tense, most likely in the next chapter.
> 
> Not many characters will show up in this chapter, as it is, essentially, a prologue. Bear with me. The rating is also likely going to rise.  
> Suggestions would not run amiss here, either. (eep)

Adelina lifts the frame away, mutters a warning nearly lost on the ones standing around and reaches to help the boy untangle himself from the sailcloth. He is unlucky, they will say, an ill omen, but she will call him Gabrysz, which means ‘strong man of G-d’ in their tongue.

The others will whisper among themselves, denying such blasphemous claims.

There is nothing strong or righteous about this boy, this weak and shivering thing that survived the storm and the wreck so obviously from the sacrifice of his own flesh and blood.

There is a shiver among the ranks, a tremulous, treacherous rasp as the boy gasps, eyes open to the sky.

He wails and cries for his Papa, but whether that be the drowned corpse that washed up beside him or another poor soul lost to the waves, no man gives any answer.

-

They call him Stiles, a concession to the wishes of their priestess, but they will not call him Gabrysz. They are a noble people, or so they like to believe, and they will not tolerate such lies.

He is a child of ill fortune.

For the first few years, they hiss charms and make the Watching sign when he comes near. The boy scuffs his feet in the sand, the dirt, the roughened earth.

He cuts his feet, but does not cry.

He is a brave boy, a quietly spiritual boy, and for the first few years, it is a trial for Adelina to keep shoes on his tender feet.

-

“Gabrysz!” His mother calls, “Ah, Gaby!”

His small feet slap and skip over the smooth wooden slats of their shared home. The delicate tap of her sandals disappeared ten or so minutes ago, as it always does, giving way to quick beating raps.

She needs to be fast to snatch up her laughing boy.

She can’t help but laugh herself, watching him duck and loop to continue the chase. He peeks at her now and then, but only when he has a substantial lead. Of course he would give her a chance to catch up. Her little boy is nothing if not a just soul.

He would give anyone a chance.

Stifling another laugh, Adelina ducks through one of the many entryways and into another. She catches him just as he is turned and searching for her, and she swings him up into her arms.

His shriek of surprise turns into one of joy as she lifts him high, spins, turns. She laughs with him, eyes bright and attentive as he chants, “Mama! Mama!”

She _is_ his mother, now, and she is so, so glad. They have both given each other a _wonderful_ chance.

She tells him, “Now, no one can get you while you are up so high!”

And he beams.

The problems start when his feet touch the ground.

-

The people of this sea-side village may have a hundred words for the things that they do not understand, but none of them are so widely used as ‘The Night Things’. It’s a silly concept, so many people assuming that all things pertaining to the night and the moon in her milk-white gown were so universally corrupt.

“Mama,” Stiles says, “You found _me_ at night!”

Adelina knows.

Everyone knows.

They look at him and see some dark and ominous fog tangling around his small, bare feet, and they do not understand what a brilliant, hopeful child he really is. They don’t understand the vibrant energy that bursts from him, the friendship with the earth—with _everything_ —that accompanies his every move.

One night, she catches him on the inland balcony, staring in the direction of the forest.

“How did I know you wouldn’t be sleeping?”

The answer is simple enough, she thinks. Tomorrow night she will dance at the year’s first festival, deliver the blessing for the rest of the season. The energy in the air is almost tangible, singing and humming and tightening slowly about the lungs.

“I can’t sleep, Mama.” He whispers, “Everything is awake.”

“Everything, Gabrysz?” She takes a step forward, the soft fabric of her sleeping robe hissing across the chilled board, and he finally looks at her.

His eyes are _glowing_ — _nearly_ glowing, she corrects herself. They flicker in the light from the hanging torches, and she stands still, waiting.

“Mama, am I bad luck?” His lower lip is setting up for the heartbreaking pout she has come to anticipate and dread in equal measure.

“Never you, brave boy. You are my good luck.”

The smile that splits his face is illuminating. She revels in it for a moment before she goes to sit beside him, tucking the silks of her robe around them. She notices a ribbon has come loose, a bright red thing, and she thinks _a-ha._

She takes it between her fingers and slides it free, lifting it so that the boy can see.

“Do you know about what this color means, Gabrysz?”

He shakes his head, for once very quiet, so she takes his slim wrist in her lap and traces the veins there. She taps against his pulse with the pad of her thumb before she begins to wind the fabric about his wrist. The knot is tight. It will not come undone easily. “Red is a vital color, with so many different meanings. It is the color of survivors—energy, movement. This is _your_ color.”

“Only mine?” He wrinkles his nose, as if she should know better, and she laughs.

“It reminds me of you. To me, this is your color.”

He nods, accepting, and she looks out at the forest.

“Everything.” She says.

They sit quietly for a while before Adelina’s eyes begin to droop and she yawns.

“It’s all right, Mama.” Her son urges, “I’ll keep you safe. We’re survivors.”

She goes to bed with certainty in her eyes and in her ears and in her soul.

He cannot be more than five.

-

That year, her dance goes well.

Each movement is filled with promises for prosperity and bountiful endeavors. Her footsteps are careful, her gestures slow and purposeful.

She turns, steps, and glides with a slow, practiced grace that has long been passed down in her line.

She is only sad that she will never be able to share these steps and turns with her son—not publically. Not so that any would acknowledge him for it. She can only teach him, to the best of her ability, the essence of her duties, of her unconditional love.

It is not a difficult subject to teach, if she measures by the gentleness of his expressions or the brightness of his eyes. It would be foolish, she thinks, to take credit for something that was given to her as a gift.

Over time, the villagers will see him as much the same.

She hopes.

For now, she dances and turns and offers hope to the eager, grasping eyes and hearts of her neighbors. She works herself into a fury of movement and shifting fabric. She flashes vivid colors, gales of texture and noise, and the drums beat a pulse of forward movement into the night.

She dances so furiously that, come the end, when she falls to her knees, she is panting. Her chest heaves, and she opens her arms to the night, to the moon and the warm, balmy air. As the villagers stamp and clap, Adelina’s son rushes forward to embrace her, and she pulls him against her and presses her face to his soft, short hair.

The villagers laugh at the boy’s eagerness, but not one aspersion is cast. Not one person calls him a devil child or an ill omen.

The sounds of celebration drown out the sounds of the sea.

-

In that same year, not long after the festival, a refugee arrives. Her name is Melissa, and she is terribly frightened. When she comes to the village, she is worn and desperate, and will tell the village people nothing but her own name.

The people form a circle around her, as they are wont to do with new things, and the whispers take up as if they were some rite of passage, some venerable tradition worth anything more than shushing admonishment. She looks at them all with wild eyes, clutching her bundle to her chest.

She calls for help, expectant, and some take a step back, frightened by the struggle evident in her eyes, her voice, the wild curls of her hair. There are scratches on her face, arms, and hands. Her cloak is torn, and the people murmur of the Night Things.

One mentions a medic.

Another an exorcist.

They do not know her, and she has only come in the evening. She may be a monstrous thing playing some horrid trick.

They look at her the way they look at Stiles.

Some make the Watching sign.

Those not enveloped in the circle mill about, concerned and confused.

Anyeti, who works in the orchards, whispers to her younger sister, who runs to fetch the priestess, but it is her son who arrives first.

He works his way through the tightly packed bodies of suspicious villagers, unseen, and tugs at the hem of her thin traveling shirt.

He turns his face up to her, eyes wide and curious, and asks, “What’s his name?”

She pauses, taken aback for a moment before smiling slowly. The boy pressed tight to her side, almost completely hidden in the folds of her cloak, peeks out from the heavy fabric. She says, “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

“What’s your name?” Stiles repeats.

The boy answers, “Scott.”

“What are you?” He asks.

“Hungry.”

“Well, of course you are.” Stiles huffs, “It’s time for dinner.”

Adelina rushes through the wall of townsfolk, gasping from her run, and cocks her head. She offers Melissa a smile that she hopes is reassuring and cocks a brow at her son, “Now, what’s all of this about?”

Stiles reaches out to take Scott’s hand and urge him forward. He displays their clasped hands, as if that is some form of answer.

Adelina shakes her head and smiles sweetly at Melissa. “I suppose this means that we will be keeping you for a while.”

Melissa laughs, and the troubles seem to melt away.

-

Scott is his very first friend, and will no doubt become his very best.

There is something warm and alive in the way the two boys interact, an implied trust that Adelina thought she would never see her son achieve.

She watches them thoughtfully, and Melissa does the same. They are content that way. She does not ask the newcomer where she has come from or why.

It is not her place to question good fortune.

-

Some months later, once Melissa and Scott are settled in the village not far from the temple grounds, setting down roots, Scott comes to stay for the night.

As Adelina sleeps, both boys sit on the inland balcony, staring out at the woods.

“Are you still hungry?” Stiles asks.

“No.” Scott answers.

“Then what are you?”

He shrugs, “I’m not sure. Is that bad?”

“No. It’s okay.”

Scott smiles, and Stiles smiles back.

Both sets of eyes are glowing brightly in the darkness, one amber and one gold.

-

 

 


	2. Depths and Shallows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles meets a few new friends and takes a trip to the edges of the water, of the forest. 
> 
> There are things waiting there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I apologize if this is rough, as I don't currently have a beta. Any help would be appreciated, both editorially and creatively. I could use a hand figuring out where, exactly, to focus the story. There are several ideas.
> 
> Feel free to find me [on tumblr.](http://littleplasticmonster.tumblr.com/) I'd love to hear from you.

The villagers learn to live with Stiles. Not many are willing to approach him or interact with him regularly—not unless they _have_ to—but a number of them have learned to just accept his presence. He is a strange boy, but he has brought them no real misfortune.

The whispers linger— _not yet, not yet_ —but until such time as they have something to blame him for, Adelina may rest easy as he roams about the village with Scott at his side. The two of them are so young and clumsy, still growing into their bodies.

She knows that both will grow up tall and strong, but until then, her boy seems intent to trip and flail over just about everything. The people watch him, sometimes smothering their laughter, and sometimes not.

Stiles grows up grinning awkwardly at pretty girls, being met with varying levels of amusement and scorn, but Scott is always there to haul him upright and brush the dust from his clothes. He is a shield, brave and loyal if a bit naïve.

Sometimes their mothers look at them and cannot quite tell where one ends and the other begins. They see no real need to. Scott and Stiles are good for one another.

They fill the hollow places where other things—whole _pasts_ —used to be. They mind each other’s cuts and scrapes, tell secrets, and run through the town and the fields with wild abandon. They laugh until their stomachs are sore.

 

And sometimes, when no one is watching, they creep down to the forest’s edge and stare into the woods. If, now and then, strange eyes glow in the shade and the underbrush, no one says a thing. 

 

* * *

 

Melissa shakes her head when Stiles and Scott run past. She shouts, “Slow down! You’ll hurt yourselves!”

Scott wouldn’t.

Scott is fast, and even though he is still growing, he has already begun to develop a preternatural grace—an ease of movement that is almost predatory in its ease. He wouldn’t fall.

Stiles is a different story. He is clumsy, and he knows it. He has been told for years, and he believes.

He falls down and cuts up his hands and knees, and Scott gathers him close. Too low for most to hear, he whimpers, and there is a black draining in the lines under Scott’s skin. He brushes the dirt and the gravel from the gaping flesh, and he licks at the line across one soft palm.

Stiles shakes his head and laughs.

 

They continue like this for years.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Stiles will always believe in Scott, because in a way that is decidedly old and quiet, they belong to one another. They see one another in the dark, and they hear one another when no one is speaking.

They spend many nights on the temple balcony, the lanterns shuttered, their eyes lit bright. They watch the fireflies gather, and they touch with sweet innocence and naivety the very essences of what they may or may not be.

In the early days, when the people still tread carefully around the refugee and her son, Scott asks, “Why are they so afraid?”

Stiles says, “Because they can’t see in the dark.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The darkest thing around, besides the forest at the village edge opposite the sea, is the blacksmith’s apprentice. He is tall, and intimidating, with eyes that seem to drink in and understand all that they see, and that seem to see everything.

Stiles wants to talk to him.

 

* * *

 

 

It takes Stiles a while to approach the blacksmith’s boy. He knows that when he does, it will be noticed. The villagers will talk about him in hushed voices, as they are long wont to do. They will have reason to—while not many risk speaking to the priestess’s boy, almost _none_ speak with the smith’s.

When Liev shouts for him, he calls him Boyd, and the name rings strong and proud, like a hammer striking an anvil. The first time Stiles heard the sound, it swept over his bones and waited beneath the skin. He needed to know this name. He needed to see this face.

He caught sight of him—a tall youth, broad and muscular, built for breaking heads or horses, easily equipped to carry out his master’s work. He had the darkest skin that Stiles had ever seen, and in his face and eyes, there was the echo of thunder.

The villagers whisper of him in hushed voices. He may be a Night Thing, they think, for he is strange and solemn. He does not speak to others unless absolutely necessary. In his free time, they say, he skirts the tavern and disappears down the path to the shore—to the same place where Adelina found her half-drowned child.

When Stiles finally comes to visit with him, he does not seem at all pleased. Stiles is not deterred.

He perches on the gate fence and watches raptly as Boyd goes about his work, heating and pounding and breaking the will of some bit of metal, perhaps imagining that it’s Stiles’ face. He can’t blame him, really. It seems a common feeling.

So Stiles speaks to him in soft tones about the pattern of the clouds and his own fondness for the seashore. Despite the stories he’s heard, he remembers the torchlight forming a halo at his mother’s back the first time she lifted him into her arms.

“The sea is beautiful,” He says, “The forest is beautiful. And your skin—your skin is beautiful.”

As he comes to the end of his wandering tongue, he realizes that Boyd has stopped his work to stare at him, curious and not a little calculating. He arches a brow at the pale, lanky boy hovering at the edges of the shop. “My skin?”

Stiles nods, inwardly pleased. Boyd may scold him now, spit at him as the others do, but he’s managed to coax the voice from him, at least. He can’t recall anyone else claiming the same accomplishment.

“You think my skin is beautiful.”  

Stiles offers a lopsided smile. Boyd should speak more, he thinks, because his voice is strong and smooth, with a humming tone. He saves the compliment for later.

“Have you seen me?” He holds out his own forearm, pale and riddled with moles. _Spots_ , some villagers call them, as if they are some sign of disease or cursed marking. A funny thing, considering how many of them have been freckled by the sun. “I’m almost translucent.”

Boyd glances over the bared blue of his veins and shakes his head. “You’d be just about the only person to think so.”

He moves as if to turn back and go about his work, but Stiles blurts out, “That’s a lie.”

Again, Boyd stops.

“They call anything they don’t understand a ‘Night Thing’. _Fire_ would be a ‘Night Thing’ if it didn’t burn so bright. But you’re good at what you do, and you’re strong, and you care. Your skin is your skin, and it’s beautiful because it’s part of a walking, talking, _feeling_ person.”

He smiles, a tad wry, “And hey, at least they’ll never call you a ghost.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

The first time Stiles hears Boyd laugh, he notes the individual strands of the sound, deep and rich and shaking. It’s a thing that lives in Boyd’s belly and chest, waiting to bubble over pink lips and wash his dark, dark skin.

This is the sound of making a friend, he thinks.

 

He is eager to tell Scott.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He does not make a habit of following Boyd. He does not expect him to run around the way he does with Scott. When they see each other, they nod, and perhaps a few bystanders are perplexed, but the acknowledgement is reassuring.

Occasionally, when Scott is off on some errand or helping Deaton with some pressing matter, Stiles visits the smith’s shop to talk with Boyd.

Boyd _does_ talk—not nearly as much as Stiles tends to, but he is a patient listener, and a thoughtful contributor. He is more logical than Scott, and tempers Stiles’ own wild theories when he poses them.

“Do you think Hilde might be a night thing?” He laughs, “Her teeth are certainly good for it.”

For once, Stiles is eager to be berated.

As he leaves, Boyd claps a hand down on his shoulder, “Keep those thoughts inside your head. They’re going to beat the silly right out of you.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

In all of their discussions, it must be acknowledged, there is always an undercurrent of fear. Stiles knows it, Boyd knows it, and Scott does, too. The villagers whisper, and for now that is all, but one day something will go wrong.

In life, something always goes wrong, and in a village like this one, the people are far less likely to seek out an actual cause than they are to blame their own children.

So they are quiet.

When Boyd motions for him one day, eyes darting down the path to the shore before heading off, Stiles knows that there must be a period of waiting. There is something wondrous and bright in Boyd’s observant eyes, a secret that Stiles is about to be part of.

Stiles loves secrets.

He nearly bursts from his skin, waiting five minutes (and then another five, to be certain) before following Boyd down towards the ocean.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Boyd is not a fisherman, but he leads Stiles toward a fisherman’s shack—an old one, Stiles realizes, unused and in disrepair. It has likely not seen service since the support stilts broke, leaving it partially submerged, rotted floorboards giving way to a shallow pool.

It is here that he first meets Erica.

 

* * *

 

 

In the shadows, in the shallows, Stiles can see the flash of fever-bright eyes reflecting just against the water’s surface. She watches him as he enters, suspicious and not a little bit hungry as Boyd motions him further into the room before turning up the lantern light.

Stiles doesn’t need it.

He knows exactly what she is, even with the rest of her hidden. Her damp-darkened golden hair is threaded with kelp and bits of shell, tangled with the remnants of the sea’s bottom. If she rises any further, he is certain that he will see a terribly beautiful face and a set of sharp teeth.

A fish’s tail flickers up from the water, slapping against the surface as if in warning.

She isn’t too happy with Boyd, it seems.

She looks back and forth between the pair of them, and Boyd lifts his hands in a placating gesture. “He’s safe, Erica. He’s a friend.”

And then, quietly, “He’s like you.”

“How is that, exactly?” She drawls, finally lifting her chin above the surface to better argue with her…Boyd. Stiles isn’t entirely certain of their relationship, but it must be something very special.

He can feel that she is wild, that she is injured, and that she trusts Boyd enough to let him see her despite both of these things, caged as she is.

Beyond that, Stiles thinks, he was right.

She is _terribly_ beautiful.

In the dimness of the lantern light, he recognizes her for all that she is. A deep, primal part of him feels the sea in her, the fathomless open depths, the endless possibility. He thinks of her as _sister_ , and his eyes glow and spark.

She startles, the water crashing and lapping against her as she moves, staring into his eyes.

“Oh.” She breathes, but even she does not know.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Boyd calls her Erica because he cannot pronounce her own deep tongue.

She tells Stiles that she finds it endearing, but that he can’t tell Boyd. He’ll get too full of himself, she thinks, and it’s best to keep him guessing. She peaks of him like he’s a simple toy, a pet human, but Stiles can tell that it is only to negate her own fears.

To her, Boyd is a thing of wonder and faith, of trust and gentle gestures. Where she shivers under Stiles’ touch, she curves fully into Boyd’s. It is better to have him apply the medicines while Stiles mutters his assurances.

_You’re doing well. You’ll be better soon. You’re so strong!_

But the smiles she saves for both of them are completely different.

In such a short time, Boyd has become an entire _world_ to her, and Stiles realizes that he _wants_ that. _Desperately_ he wants that.

And he thinks, perhaps, that he might find it in the woods.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The woods are home to all sorts of things, none of them truly certain.

Except for trouble.

Stiles can feel it deep inside himself—the woods are always there, and the woods are always waiting. He arrived by sea, and the sea itself is a familiar presence, always at his back. The trees, towering high at the village edge, seem to be awaiting their turn.

“Do you suppose we’ll ever be brave enough?” He asks one day, sitting at the farthest of the village’s clearings. He is not specific, but Scott understands.

He does not say, _to go deeper—to find out_ , but Scott understands.

He looks into the shadows, his eyes glowing faintly, his nose filled with the scents of many hundred things, and Stiles wonders if he will burst from his skin and dash into the underbrush where something more is waiting.

“No.” Scott answers, “But I think we’ll have to go anyway.”

The day they speak of looms ever closer.

None of the village children will ever be ready.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a growing playlist for this story, if anyone is interested.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr at [littleplasticmonster](http://littleplasticmonster.tumblr.com/).


End file.
